This invention relates generally to a system and method of adjusting the pitch angle of a store externally mounted on an aircraft during flight of the aircraft as a function of aircraft conditions and flight parameters to minimize the frontal area of the store.
Existing bomb racks are installed in pylons having a fixed angle of attack. The fixed angle will usually align the store into the relative airstream with the airplane for one assumed flight condition.
More recently for high speed airplanes which are highly maneuverable, bombing accuracy has been enhanced with sophisticated mechanisms and systems for bomb ejection. Although such systems necessarily involve some adjustment of the bomb, such positioning occurs as part of the bomb ejection sequence for the purpose of improving bombing accuracy.
The new family of large finned electro-optical and laser guided stores have become very significant weapons for external carriage. These large finned stores present excessive increases in frontal area when not pointed into the air stream. It has been calculated that one laser guided two-thousand pound store presents an increase in frontal area of fifty-four square inches when carried at an angle of three degrees relative to the air stream.
As used herein, a store is a container, a rocket, a bomb, or vehicle carried externally on an aircraft.